I think the problem is that certain views are much stronger indicators of someone being willing to eventually shove their views down your throat. If I was a big corporation shopping for, say, spam filter software, I’d rather sign a 3 year contract with a regular company than, for example, a company that is openly fundamentalist Christians. Why? Because the Christians are much more likely to start randomly making ridiculous changes that only make sense to other Christians, like spam filtering out anything with the word “Allah”, etc. They may not do that now, but I need to look further than just right now because I don’t want to get locked in to an ecosystem that is going to turn sour. Sure I can always switch, but why not just choose the one that has less risk of that at the onset?

Now some beliefs that I disagree with are less like this than others. For instance if the devs disagreed with me about their favorite movies, I’m not going to take that into consideration, because that’s not the sort of thing or the sort of person who is likely to abuse their power to aid that cause. But transphobia? That is exactly the sort of thing that someone, as has been proven many times now, will sit on and downplay until they are given power and influence to act on it. Using their software contributes to their influence, especially in the browser world.

Lastly, all other things equal, I’d rather use the product of a smart team full of smart people, than a dumb team full of dumb people. Transphobia is a dumb belief to have, it is a result of being unintelligent. Many smart people (and let’s be honest, especially developers) won’t want to work with someone like that. Whether you think that’s reasonable or not, it’s hard to deny. It’s certainly hard to picture any great trans developers wanting to contribute. So a lot of things add up, especially when looking a few links down the causal chain, to make it more than just a matter of whether they believe differently than I do.

Yeah same. I respect the huge amount of work it takes to make a suite like that, but… I’m lucky I’ve worked with Blender a lot to give me a good impression of open source software. If Libre was my first thing I experimented with in the open source world (and I think for many, many people it probably is), I would probably think “wow open source software is a joke, I guess you get what you pay for after all”. It really makes a horrible impression. I wonder why LibreOffice has so many usability pains vs Blender, despite the fact that both applications have very high demand. Maybe it’s just that LibreOffice seems really dull to contribute to?

Post-Zuckerberg? I’m confused on the eras of Facebook I guess. He’s still CEO isn’t he? Wouldn’t that make the whole history of the company the Zuckerberg era?

Vertical video is better for content focused on a single standing performer, because it allows as much of the screen resolution as possible to show the body. Horizontal is better for a performer lying down or any traditional horizontal sex acts, for the same reason.

I’m probably reading a little too far into this, but IMO Gen Z is much less interested in “simulations” of intercourse and is more interested in something “real”, i.e someone doing a dance. Intercourse feels like a fantasy, like you’re supposed to imagine that you’re the one having intercourse, it’s that fantasy which is appealing. Something like dancing or dirty talking is more honest about what it is, since a video of someone dancing or talking is essentially the same experience as if they were actually there in front of you. I believe that because Gen Z is more digitally native than older generations, they see digital content not as a substitute or fantasy for a real thing, but rather as a real thing in itself, and the nature of the content they consume reflects that. Another example of this is the shift from real-life streamers who fake personalities but pretend that they are presenting their real selves, to vtubers - who implicitly acknowledge that they are playing a fictional character for their stream as symbolized by their avatars. The human streamers are a fantasy substitute for a real human friend, but with a vtuber the content does not pretend to be different than what it actually is - a pretend character putting on a show for your enjoyment. By acknowledging its artificiality and integrating it into the content itself, it shifts from being something “fake” and “simulated” to being something “real”. To me it’s the exact same dynamic manifesting in a different area.

Now of course, I do understand that vertical content also simply means you don’t need to rotate your phone, and that Gen Z is almost exclusively using the Internet on the phone vs. the desktop as older generations will. But this too is essentially a reflection of the feeling that digital content is not an artificial recreation confined to a specific display area (a TV or computer) but rather perpetually available (your phone), as would be appropriate for something which has taken on the status of being real rather than fake. The two forces reinforce each other, imo.